Thread: Thinking of getting Sirius

For the schedule, look at post #1
here.

Reception will deteriorate for all during the transition, beginning mid year, which is about when they will stop activating ver 1 Sirius radios. How kind of them. In early 2014 all ver 1 Sirius radios will stop working. So buy that radio and get less than 2 years use out of it!

Originally Posted by navychop

Most Sirius radios will soon be garbage. I suspect there are old radios still on the market that will not be useful much longer. No Sirius car radios will work, new compliant models do not come out until the 2013 model year.

IIRC most XM radios will continue to pick up a limited selection of sat channels, but the Sirius models are all toast, unless designed for the new, improved, combined system.

No they're not, SiriusXM has said the existing Sirius and XM signals will continue for another decade or more until the satellites run out of fuel. You only need a new receiver to take advantage of the new channels or other new features.

Originally Posted by Tampa8

Huh???? Where do you guys get this information from? My original Roady from many years ago still works great. The second generation Roady still works great. No XM radio is obsolete , they will work, including any car radio. The only difference is the newest one gets the extra channels. In three or four years, who knows I guess, but you can say that about Dish receivers too.
2.0 is already here, it has no effect on current radios, other than having more channels.

Which is why I said most XM radios will continue to pick up a limited selection of sat channels.

2.0 is NOT already here, except in the mind of advertising execs. Only a portion is here today. The easy part. They are going to kill the XM terrestrial network next, then use some bandwidth to conduct testing. Then move to their new "HM" modulation method for much of the spectrum. and they'll have less than half the repeaters when all is said and done. Read the link in my post above for more sad news for Sirius radio owners.

Originally Posted by rglore

No they're not, SiriusXM has said the existing Sirius and XM signals will continue for another decade or more until the satellites run out of fuel. You only need a new receiver to take advantage of the new channels or other new features.

I will research this, as I may be out of date. But the last I read, before I quit keeping up with the news, was that they would not be allowed to retain the spectrum, as part of the whole deal. Then something came up about how they would continue to use the spectrum, but NOT for legacy Sirius radios. The so-called "Sirius" satellite yet to be launched is supposed to be "full" spectrum, able to work under either Sirius or XM.

SiriusXM is not exactly blasting this information in neon on their site.

BTW, it's been a LONG time since satellites have been allowed to run out of fuel. They are required to retain enough fuel to either enter a rapidly decaying orbit or move to a "parking" or "graveyard" orbit out beyond the Clarke belt, where they will slowly drift away from the earth.

on edit PS: SiriusXM is not making much in the way of detailed announcements on this. The timelines are based on leaked documents that SiriusXM has not disavowed. That "until running out of fuel" comment may have been some early marketing BS designed to keep people buying until the real story comes out, presumably after new hardware has flooded the market, including new vehicles. And they physically CAN'T keep all the old XM channels going. They need the space for the 30% more new channels.

I didn't mean actually running out, just end of life. The last quarter's conference call they mentioned something about existing signals would last at least a decade. Ford and others are still putting Sirius radios in the 2012 models. Thursday is another conference call and maybe there will be some clarification. The Sirius geosynchronous sats will die in a few years but are being replaced by geostationary ones to continue legacy Sirius service.

Copied from the link I provided:
The closest thing we have to a confirmation of this would be Mike Roberts, VP of Retail Sales at SiriusXM state to Twice.com:
"The service will add 30 channels of programming transmitted through XM satellites. Sirius satellites will not deliver the service to either aftermarket or automaker-installed Sirius tuners, but he said he expects automakers offering Sirius tuners to move to the XM satellite platform."
The OEM partners who offer Sirius (Ford, Chrysler, etc) are SWITCHING from Sirius to XM. That's a pretty damn good confirmation of this roadmap to Sirius obsolescence if you ask me.

Since SXM has not made official announcements, probably doesn't want to (sales) and maybe can't for some time anyway, it's all got to be considered rumor. But where there's smoke..... So far, all I've found is it looks like a 2015 shutdown, not 2014. And there's some talk of conversion kits. Heck, you can buy a portable today and link it to your car radio (& still take it back inside the house). I guess you could call that a conversion kit. I'm still looking.

Originally Posted by navychop

And they physically CAN'T keep all the old XM channels going. They need the space for the 30% more new channels.

That's just not how it works, and the information is just wrong in some of the posts here. 2.0 IS here, it is being used. It is essentially a different method of compressing that supposedly does not degrade the sound, but uses much less space. So yes they can physically keep the current channels. Of course at some point if things work out they will want to go all 2.0 just as Dish wants to go all the same as the Eastern Arc. But there are numerous posts, discussions, etc... that current radios still have quite a while before possibly being obsolete. And we aren't talking alot of money anyway. Many are below $50, some free.

http://www.satelliteguys.us/siriusxm...-sirius-2.html